Pipe, such as plastic, copper, lead pipe and the like, has been used for connecting homes and creating networks for utilities, for instance, water, sewage and natural gas. As pipes become older, they break down, crack, develop scaling on interior surfaces that can clog the pipe, etc. and thereby require replacement.
A technique know as pipe bursting is currently used as a convenient method to replace underground pipe without the need to completely dig up the pipe to be replaced. A pipe breaking device, such as an expander or a mole, is pulled by a cable on a motorized spool through the existing pipe while it is still underground. The expander is designed to break, split or burst the pipe, and at the same time to push the old pipe into the surrounding soil. The expansion of the old pipe allows the expander to pull a replacement pipe into place.
After use, the pipe breaking device may be decoupled from the cable to allow threading of the cable through another existing pipe or to store the cable on the spool until needed in the future. The cable pulling the pipe breaking device is often tightly coupled with the cable due to the pulling forces of the motorized spool. Because of the flexible nature of the cable it can be very difficult to decouple the cable from the pipe splitter.